Tell Your Representative to Bring a Water Bottle

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="261" caption="You don't need to drink this aggressively. Image courtesy of banthebottle.net"][/caption]
In 2010, the House of Representatives spent $190,000 in three months on bottled water alone. That's nearly four teachers' salaries that could have been paid with the cash spent on prepackaged water while one-penny-per-gallon tap water is being snubbed.
Is it laziness? Some water bottle lids are kind of hard to twist open, so one could argue they're expending about the same amount of energy grabbing a bottle from the fridge as they are exerting their biceps to pour from a Brita pitcher.
If Congress is feigning lack of resources, George Hawkins of the local water utility DC Water wrote a letter to House Speaker John Boehner offering to supply free reusable water bottles for all members of Congress as well as free water quality testing in all congressional buildings.
Congress is out of excuses. Boehner wants to cut $35 million from bloated House of Representative spending? Great. Let's start with ditching the disposable bottles, which end up discarded in our landfills, lakes and streams to the tune of one million tons of plastic each year. Let's get our representatives to spearhead the shift from disposable bottles, of which the energy to produce the plastic is enough to fuel almost three million cars a year.
If you already tote a reusable water bottle around town and are feeling empowered the spread the message, check out these nine great ideas to reduce plastic bottle waste at your workplace from BanTheBottle.net.